Intent

At Holy Family, we want our children to gain a coherent understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. Our curriculum should inspire the children’s curiosity to know more about the past. We want our children to ask perceptive questions and think critically using sources of information to support their opinion. They should understand how people’s lives have changed, how diverse societies were and the challenges that were faced. 

Essential characteristics of a historian at Holy Family: 

• An excellent knowledge and understanding of people, events, and contexts from a range of historical periods and of historical concepts and processes. 
• The ability to think critically about history and communicate ideas very confidently in styles appropriate to a range of audiences. 
• The ability to consistently support, evaluate and challenge their own and others’ views using detailed, appropriate and accurate historical evidence derived from a range of sources. 
• The ability to think, reflect, debate, discuss and evaluate the past, formulating and refining questions and lines of enquiry. 
• A passion for history and an enthusiastic engagement in learning, which develops their sense of curiosity about the past and their understanding of how and why people interpret the past in different ways. 
• A respect for historical evidence and the ability to make robust and critical use of it to support their explanations and judgments. 
• A desire to embrace challenging activities, including opportunities to undertake high- quality research across a range of history topics.  

Implementation

Our curriculum distinguishes between subject topics and threshold concepts. 

Subject topics are the specific aspects of subjects that are studied e.g.  Significant People, Ancient Egypt, World War Two etc. Threshold concepts tie together the subject topics into meaningful schema. The same concepts are explored in a wide breadth of topics. Through this ‘forwards-and-backwards engineering’ of the curriculum, pupils return to the same concepts over and over, and gradually build an understanding of them.

The four threshold concepts in history are:

• Investigate and interpret the past – This concept involves recognising that our understanding of the past comes from an interpretation of the available evidence.
• Build an overview of world history – This concept involves an appreciation of the characteristic features of the past and that these features are similar and different across time periods, and an understanding that life is different for different sections of society.
• Understand chronology – This concept involves an understanding of how to chart the passing of time and how some aspects of history happened at similar times in different places.
• Communicate historically – This concept involves using historical vocabulary and techniques to convey information about the past.

History is an essential part of learning in EYFS  as it is incorporated in everyday learning. The historical aspects of the children’s work relate to the objectives set out in the early learning goals (ELGs).

In KS1, the children will begin by learning about small snapshots of history by considering changes within living memory to help children to understand how history is always being made. They will also look at local history in order for children to understand how their homes have been affected by people and events around them, giving them a regional identity. They will start to look at history on a global scale by looking at significant people and events from the past.

In KS2, children will begin to study specific periods in a chronological order. Children will continue to develop the concepts of historical enquiry by beginning to differentiate between primary and secondary sources and make independent evaluations of historical events. They will be able to build up an understanding of chronology from ancient history to modern history.

Impact

Children at Holy Family will be able to know more and remember more about history. They will be able to understand historical concepts and vocabulary and have an understanding of the events and people that have shaped the world that we live in today. They will have developed skills such as problem solving, asking and answering questions, testing and evaluating hypotheses as well as developing a sense of intrigue. The children will be well equipped to use these skills across other areas of learning that will allow them to progress in their learning as they move away from primary education.